Words on a page that might help me, or you, someday, maybe.

Summer

Today I released the sixth issue of my monthly digital magazine. This one was the hardest to get out yet. To be honest, part of me was tempted to stop bothering with it. It’s a lot of work for minimal, if any, reward. Every time I put one out I obsess over how it’s doing, how it’s performing, what the analytics look like, how many retweets I got et cetera. It’s unhealthy, and stifling.

I need to stop doing it for the numbers and start doing it for the achievement. I’m proud of how it looks, and how I’ve collaborated to create it each month. I just need to recognise that more, rather than being bogged down by the circulation.

This month’s been rough, creatively. I’ve felt uninspired, unintelligent and somewhat depressed. I’ve not been putting effort into these daily blogs, and the quality has suffered because of it. I’ve let my drive for the magazine slip, and as such this issue is almost three weeks late. It was supposed to be the June issue, but as it’s August tomorrow I thought it made more sense to skip a month and release it as July’s issue. I thought that made more sense than being super behind on my releases. This way, next month’s issue will be ‘August’ and will be released in August. It’s better.

It almost wasn’t released at all, to be honest. It almost became another one of my projects that get discarded to the incomplete pile. But it didn’t. I got it out. And I’m proud of it. And here it is:

It’s finally summer. I spend nine months of the year waiting for summer, and then three months wondering when it’s actually going to arrive. From late June to late September I wear shorts on every opportunity, because if I wear shorts then that makes it feel like summer, even if it doesn’t look like summer.

As you might have guessed, the theme for this month’s Feed Magazine is ‘summer’. Our travel writers describe global various summer traditions (page 6 and 8) from Croatia to Japan. Closer to home, there’s always your local beer garden (page 10), and wherever you go, you’ll need a summer playlist (page 18).

If the weather ends up all British and you’d rather stay inside, we’ve got a video game round-up of the E3 convention (page 24) so you’ve got something to keep you busy this summer until the football season is back (page 12).